


The Lockdown in Spinner's End

by Erin_Envoy



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen, Sorry and I didn't mean to offend anyone, Why Did I Write This?, when Snape lives to see COVID-19
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-14
Updated: 2020-05-14
Packaged: 2021-03-03 05:35:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 783
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24179815
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Erin_Envoy/pseuds/Erin_Envoy
Summary: The Muggles were in lockdown... and Severus Snape was running out of food.
Kudos: 5





	The Lockdown in Spinner's End

**Author's Note:**

> I don't know what possessed me, and I don't want to upset anyone, nor understate the severity of the pandemic in the real world. My sincere wishes to everyone who's having tough times.  
> But writing this crap made me laugh and it was the first complete work I'd ever written in English (though a short one), so I posted this anyway.
> 
> **Not a native English speaker. Any correction would be appreciated.**

The Muggle government eventually surrendered the country to complete lockdown. For Severus Snape, it meant more trouble than it should be to any other wizard. Don't get him wrong - he was more than willing to obey the social-distancing part, but the rest of it was not so pleasing.

  
Being a newly-turned 60-year-old, he was not sure if he was also susceptible to COVID-19, and was not going to prove or disapprove any sides by experimenting on himself. It was more reasonable to wear a mask spell, apply regularly the sterilizing Scourgify (yet he often found himself wondering if his wand was clean enough), and Apparate directly to anywhere you wanted in the wizarding world. Surely you couldn't just Apparate in a Muggle store at this time of the year.

  
So here came the problem. How could he go to Muggle supermarkets without 1) breaking the International Statute of Secrecy, and 2) infringing the Muggles lockdown restrictions?

  
Yes, Severus Snape usually did his everyday shopping in the Muggle world, which might surprise many a wizard, or witch (mind you, this was the highest level of political correctness he could ever cope with. He never deigned to understand campaigns about non-binary genders or non-human form intelligence). But their reaction counted for nothing to him. Like mother like son - he found shopping in Muggle supermarkets quite economical and convenient. The locations were generally remote enough for easy Apparation, and a reclusive hoarder like him enjoyed buying in bulk twice a year. Also, they never failed him when it came to condiments and beverages.

  
To be frank, he was lucky enough not bothering to break his neck snatching surgical masks like Muggles. But all the same, he was shocked for the first time in his dear life when he walked into the half-robbed Tesco near Spinner's End. No avocado, no kimchi, no toilet paper. No one could ever describe how grudging he was when he left the supermarket with the least number of shopping bags he'd carried in more than two decades, knowing from the conversations around him that no stores in Cokeworth had more things at stock.

  
And he was still a human being who needed food.

  
When he finished lunch, he cancelled the scheduled potion investigation and sat through the entire afternoon in the lounge trying to come up with something vaguely similar to a stock-up plan. The first idea crossed his mind was quite enticing but not viable at all. One could no longer break into others' properties, loot as much as he wanted, and conjure a Dark Mark to escape all the legal consequences. Nowadays, he and Lucius were the only Death Eaters alive, so it didn't require any intellectual capabilities to figure out which one of them was desperately deprived of food. Pity.

  
(Speaking of Lucius, that man couldn't care less about such day-to-day trivia. Even the coronavirus wouldn't change his life any more than his peacocks' life. How Severus wished to be equally privileged.)

  
Since the whole country was under quarantine, he'd better venture to other countries. But the uncertainty lay in the travelling procedures. Though the wizarding world was not greatly endangered by the pandemic, the political discrepancies of the past few years somehow had cracked the Isle-Continent relationship, and he wasn't sure a former Death Eater would be cordially welcomed when his claim of "buying everyday groceries" might be deemed far from innocuous in the foreign authorities' judgment, nor could he confirm if his Apparate certificate was valid across the channel.

  
Another possibility was to invent within days (depending on how long his own supply would last) a whole new branch of alchemy or transfiguration to make food out of nothingness. Evidently, he didn't believe that he could surpass great wizards like Albus in mere days simply out of necessity, but it indeed sounded like an interesting project to coax funds from ignorant sponsors. Maybe he should bring it up next time he met Minerva.

  
Should none of the aforementioned plans work, there would always be an ultimate option: ask his former colleagues, preferably Poppy, Pomona, or Minerva, what they would recommend as the Costco counterpart in the wizarding world. He might even be able to lift something edible from Pomona's garden. Actually, any other human-being would directly resort to this method without a second thought, but he just didn't want to admit that he was socially acceptable after all.

  
At least, unlike the ladies, he wasn’t teaching those dunderheads of Hogwarts right now. He shuddered at the thought of supervising dozens of cauldrons via Boom, wished good luck to the current potion professor, and then quietly retreated to his lab to make up for the unnecessarily lost time.


End file.
